<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>neon by tsukinowa (kiki_bw)</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26559928">neon</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiki_bw/pseuds/tsukinowa'>tsukinowa (kiki_bw)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Haikyuu!!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Compliant, College, Haikyuu!! Manga Spoilers, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Thinking about confessing, TsukkiBdayWeek2020</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 09:27:45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,004</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26559928</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiki_bw/pseuds/tsukinowa</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Tsukishima knows what he wants.<br/>It would be so easy for him and Sakusa to make the transition from friends to something more. They wouldn’t have to change much in their lives to make space for each other.</p><p>But Tsukishima has, if anything, always been a coward.</p><p> </p><p>For Tsukishima Week 2020 Day 1: Neon</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sakusa Kiyoomi/Tsukishima Kei</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>62</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>neon</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Contains slight manga spoilers. Mostly canon-compliant.</p><p>Enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>If there’s one thing Tsukishima hates about his university in Tokyo, it’s the student accommodations. He’s only here on exchange for a semester or two, which does not warrant him splurging on renting an apartment all for himself near the university, and an unfortunate byproduct of this is that he tends to get sexiled from his shared flat by his roommate. Often. And there’s only so much noise that his top-notch headphones can block, even with loud ear-splitting rock music on.</p><p>At this point, he’s glad that his university back in Sendai is paying for the accommodation because he’d be seriously pissed off if he was paying real money for a place he barely lives in.</p><p>It is with mild irritation and the beginnings of a stress headache that he makes the trek up the stairs, laptop in hand, and bag on his shoulder. He exits the stairway on the top-most floor and knocks on a door.</p><p>“You know,” drawls a low voice as the door opens. “You should really drop a complaint at the admin office.”</p><p>Sakusa steps aside to let Tsukishima in despite his words, and Tsukishima steps in, grumbling under his breath. He toes off his shoes and socks and lines them up neatly beside Sakusa’s.</p><p>“It’s not worth it,” he replies, placing his bag beside the low coffee table. “And I’m not the one paying for it anyway.”</p><p>The electric kettle clicks off with an audible sound, and Sakusa heads to the kitchen to make them tea, while Tsukishima heads to the bathroom to wash his hands and feet.</p><p>Tsukishima has now been to Sakusa’s place often enough to know the drill without being told what to do. He washes his hands with soap at the basin, then rolls up his pants a bit to wash his feet with the handheld shower. </p><p>Tsukishima tries not to stare at himself in the mirror. He knows how he looks, knows what Sakusa saw. Tired eyes dry from staring at the laptop screen for too long, dark bags underneath from the stress of too little time to finish all that he has to, shoulders heavy from fatigue--all unfortunate side effects of pursuing a college education. He splashes his face and unrolls the small towel Sakusa has kept aside on the counter for him, wiping himself dry. He tosses the used towel in the small basket right outside the bathroom door, and steps into the house slippers Sakusa always keeps for him.</p><p>By the time he settles at the coffee table on one of the cushions on the floor and powers his laptop on, Sakusa has come over with two large steaming mugs, the little strings of the tea bags fluttering at the edges.</p><p>“Houjicha”, Sakusa says, placing a mug on the coaster Tsukishima puts down.</p><p>It’s Tsukishima’s favorite.</p><p>He had never been a tea person, but in the months he has spent as a frequent visitor at Sakusa’s place, he’s picked a favorite out of tea connoisseur Sakusa’s extraordinary collection.</p><p><i>Not that houjicha is a particularly extravagant tea</i>, Sakusa would inevitably say. <i>It’s literally the first tea on the shelves at the supermarket.</i></p><p>Sakusa blows at his own mug and sips at his tea, taking a seat on the couch behind Tsukishima.</p><p>“So,” Sakusa starts. “Another stupid essay tonight?”</p><p>“Yes,” Tsukishima sighs, taking a hearty sip of his tea. It calms him down a bit. “A stupidly important essay.”</p><p>One of the reasons why Tsukishima and Sakusa hit off as well as they did is this. They both prioritize their studies, fastidious in everything they have to do, even when it is something they absolutely loathe.</p><p>Neither of them does things half-way. It’s either all or all.</p><p>“Too bad, I was hoping for a distraction from mine,” Sakusa replies easily and Tsukishima tries hard not to read between the lines.</p><p>He watches as Sakusa gathers his mug and moves to the small one-person dining table where a laptop is on already. He merely hums in response and gets comfortable, settling in for what he knows will be a long night.</p><p>It is a testament to how often they’ve done this that the silence is comfortable, interspersed only by the soft <i>tap-tap</i> of their keyboards and an occasional question about word-choice and what sounds better.</p><p>Most of the time, they study and catch up on schoolwork, with Tsukishima setting up at the coffee table, resting on the couch behind as Sakusa either spreads out on it, tablet in hand, or works at the dining table, typing furiously on his laptop. Neither of the tables is big enough to fit them both at the same time, but Tsukishima startles when he finds himself thinking about chipping in to buy Sakusa a bigger table.</p><p>Sometimes, they watch the documentaries Tsukishima has to for class, either making dry comments or getting lost in the contents, and Sakusa now knows more about Mohenjo-daro and dinosaurs than he will ever need to in life. On the rare occasion that they don’t have any pressing assignments, they watch a random movie or a show. They seldom order take-out; preferring instead to cook a simple dinner together. Sometimes, Tsukishima gets kicked out by his roommate late enough that they’ve both had dinner already.</p><p>Tsukishima stays late often enough that he has a place on the spare futon Sakusa has, that first hadn’t seen the light of day, but now hasn’t seen the inside of the hall closet in many weeks.</p><p>They haven’t talked about it, whatever <i>this</i> is.</p><p>It would be a lie to say that Tsukishima hasn’t thought about it. It would not be a lie to say that Tsukishima spends possibly every waking moment thinking about it. He knows how he feels. Overthinking is an unfortunate personality flaw of his, and he knows that his feelings have gradually started to run deeper than just a simple crush. </p><p>He knows what he wants.</p><p>It would be so easy to make the transition from friends to something more, to greet Sakusa with a soft kiss every time Tsukishima intruded in his house, to take him out on dates to the quiet traditional tea-house that he likes, to twine their fingers together as they sat on the couch, to bump into him accidentally-on-purpose when they cooked in the kitchen.</p><p>Perhaps Sakusa would kiss him back, perhaps he would hip-check Tsukishima in turn, perhaps he would run his fingers through Tsukishima’s freshly washed hair as they lay on the couch together like Tsukishima wants him to.</p><p>They wouldn’t have to change much in their lives to make space for each other.</p><p>But Tsukishima has, if anything, always been a coward.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He doesn’t remember falling asleep. It’s uncomfortable, his head is thrown back to rest on the couch, glasses still perched precariously on his nose, mouth dry from being open, and a trail of what suspiciously feels like drool at the corner of it.</p><p>It takes Tsukishima a few seconds to lift his heavy head, neck cricked painfully. He’s way too tall to fall asleep at the low table like that.</p><p>There’s a rustle of fabric as he moves his hand to adjust his glasses, and neon fills his gaze.</p><p>The proud black <i>Itachiyama</i> stamped across the fabric stares back at him.</p><p>It’s Sakusa’s old high school jacket, Tsukishima realizes with a start. The yellow-green neon volleyball jacket is draped across his shoulders like a blanket, barely covering him.</p><p>It smells a bit like Febreeze and a bit like fabric softener, but a lot like Sakusa.</p><p>The first time Tsukishima remembers seeing the in-your-face color of the Itachiyama volleyball uniform in person is at the spring nationals his first year of high school. There’s a sea of jerseys his team wades through, mostly made up of shades of blues, blacks and reds, and an occasional pink, but the Itachiyama neon grabs his attention as one of their players greets Kageyama.</p><p>Tsukishima remembers thinking how headache-inducing the color is, how much more blinding it would be once it was underneath the bright lights of the court, and how he and Yamaguchi had stifled laughter at the thought of Itachiyama blinding their opponents with their uniforms like it was an ultimate pokemon move.</p><p>He’d caught sight of another Itachiyama player in the corner, radiating strong <i>don’t-approach-me</i> energy and shrugged mentally. Some people were like that.</p><p>It isn’t until he catches one of their matches that he gets an inexplicable sense of this-is-nationals. He watches their number 10 wing spiker, Sakusa, twist his hand at an angle so genuinely ugly that the ball bounces off the blockers’ hands and receivers’ arms in unexpected directions.</p><p>He feels an inexplicable sense of anticipation fill him.</p><p>It isn’t until his third year though, that they actually face Itachiyama, still in their eye-watering neon colors, but even without the spiker with the freakish wrists, Karasuno loses. It’s bittersweet because they come third, but Tsukishima feels a mix of resignation, completion, and elation because it’s the best they’ve ever placed.</p><p>Fast forward two years, he finds himself spending more time alone in a peer cubicle at a 24-hour library in Tokyo near the university than he does in his room, irritated at being kicked out time and again by his roommate who cannot keep it in his pants.</p><p>Running into Sakusa jogging in his hideous neon Itachiyama jacket might have been one of the luckiest things to ever happen to him, because days later, after realizing the sheer amount of time Tsukishima spends at the library, Sakusa starts inviting him over to study, and he never goes back to the library again.</p><p>It’s easy that they live in the same building. It’s easy for Tsukishima to realize how particular Sakusa is and to respect his boundaries. It’s easy for both of them to get used to each other. It's easy, the way their lives intertwine.</p><p>If only it would be just as easy for Tsukishima to confess.</p><p>He may be a coward, but it’s not rejection that Tsukishima is afraid of, or even realizing that he’s been building castles in the air in his mind and that Sakusa merely tolerates his presence and perhaps pities him a bit. It isn't the thought that maybe Sakusa would not want him, or someone like him.</p><p>What Tsukishima is most afraid of is losing Sakusa. Of losing the friendship that they’ve crafted carefully. Of losing the ease of companionship that comes with spending time with him. The last thing he wants is to cross an unspoken line and make Sakusa uncomfortable.</p><p>At some point in the night, Sakusa seems to have gone to bed, having shut Tsukishima's laptop and dimmed the large lights in the living room, but the light from outside streams in through the windows.</p><p>It falls on the soft, worn neon jacket Tsukishima is still holding.</p><p>Strangely, it gives him courage and fills him with the same determination he had felt watching the owner of the jacket at his first nationals.</p><p>Perhaps Sakusa will reject him. Perhaps he won't.</p><p>But Tsukishima will never know if he doesn't take the chance.</p><p><i>It’s better to have loved and lost than never ever loved, Tsukki</i>, the wise Yamaguchi voice in his head supplies helpfully. Tsukishima isn’t sure that it even applies in this case, if it even is love, but maybe it's something worth giving a shot.</p><p>It feels like high school volleyball all over again. Maybe Tsukishima will lose, maybe he'll win, but at least he would have tried his best as he did as a third-year against Itachiyama.</p><p>Tomorrow, he decides, gathering up the jacket, he’ll listen to his heart, but for now, he retreats to futon awaiting him, laid out neatly.</p><p>Tomorrow. It fills him with trepidation but he's determined. He hopes he won't lose it tomorrow.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>When Sakusa wakes up in the morning, he cannot help but smile at Tsukishima curled up tightly under the blanket. It's impossible to miss the neon of the jacket Tsukishima has worn to sleep.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <strike>It's karma's last laugh at Tsukishima that he falls for a boy while making fun of his neon uniform, and ends up in an equally revolting shade of green years later.</strike>
</p><p>Come yell about hq with me on my brand new twitter! <a href="https://twitter.com/_tsukinowa?s=09">@_tsukinowa </a></p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>